Telephone bill summary information is useful for a variety of purposes. For example, bill summary information may be used to automatically debit accounts for payment, to distribute charges to those who incurred them, and for cost tracking and reduction. Conventional telephone bills provide standard summary information, such as the total charges due. The customer who receives the bill has no control over the summary information presented on the bill and cannot define or request custom summary information to appear on the bill. Recipients of such bills must themselves generate the summary information they need. It would be useful if bills including the desired customer defined or requested summary information were automatically generated by the telephone billing process.
Conventional telephone bills are generated periodically, but a need for the information on the bills may arise before the end of a period. For example, telephone bills are often generated monthly, but it may be desired to debit accounts more frequently. Likewise, in order to track or reduce costs, billing information, and in particular, billing summary information, may be need more frequently than bills are generated, or even on demand. It would be useful if telephone billing summary information were available in real-time.